‘Godzilla’ roars back to the big screen

Thursday

May 15, 2014 at 10:21 AMMay 15, 2014 at 10:24 AM

Dana BarbutoThe Patriot Ledger

Godzilla, the granddaddy of all movie monsters, needs a new agent. The gigantic reptile is the title character in director Gareth Edwards’s franchise reboot, yet he doesn’t make his first screen appearance until almost an hour into the movie. His ensuing scenes are scarce, at best, until the climactic showdown on the streets of San Francisco against a pair of horny Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms – or M.U.T.O’s. It’s a triple-creature feature!

Perhaps Edwards, who directed the indie hit “Monsters” was purposely withholding the Big Guy to, you know, build tension and suspense. Godzilla’s claws are all over the so-called story, but not seeing him is supposed to generate something scarier, something “Jaws”-like. But Edwards is no Spielberg and “Godzilla” is only watchable when the King of Monsters is seen crushing skyscrapers, flattening Honolulu, Las Vegas and spewing his signature fiery radioactive breath. That’s good stuff and provides fodder for incredible spectacle, especially in Imax 3-D, that takes you inside the belly of the beast. There’s a pretty thrilling skydiving sequence and another involving a locomotive carrying nuclear bombs across a flimsy trestle. The tsunami Godzilla unleashes in Hawaii feels so real you might get up and run for safety.

Story-wise, the script suffers from a lack of pathos and is littered with cookie-cutter characters played by terrific actors who collectively have nothing to do but spew expository dialogue, breathe heavy and look befuddled. Edwards egregiously squanders a cast that includes Emmy and Oscar-winners in Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”) and Juliette Binoche (“The English Patient”); Oscar-nominees Sally Hawkins (“Blue Jasmine”), David Strathairn (“Good Night and Good Luck”) and Ken Watanabe (“The Last Samurai”); and up-and-comers Elizabeth Olsen (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”) and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (“Kick-Ass”). They’re just like us – confused and bored with an origin story credited to a trio of writers.

The narrative covers 15 years of suspicious nuclear explosions, seismic activity and atomic bombs. The action gets under way in earnest in Japan in 1999 after a dubious plant meltdown at the facility where Cranston’s Joe Brody is a nuclear physicist along with his ill-fated wife, Sandra (Binoche). Years later, their son, Ford (Taylor-Johnson), is an explosives expert in the Navy and Dad has turned into a slightly mad nuclear conspiracy theorist bent on exposing the real reason the plant melted down. We know why, but it’s not discovered until later that these explosions created the M.U.T.O’s and now these monsters – huge spider-like creatures that feed on radioactive objects – are looking to spawn, leaving crumbled cities and human bodies as collateral damage in the wake of their mutant booty call. Oh, what havoc sex can wreak on mankind!

Along the way, the business of saving the world falls into the hands of Taylor-Johnson’s Ford, who’s just trying to make it back home to his wife (Olsen) and young son. This family oriented storyline balances out the intense action, but Taylor-Johnson’s portrayal is more bland than urgent. His Ford is supposed to be the hero, yet doesn’t do anything, except save one little boy. He can’t even disarm the nuke he himself retrofitted. Olsen has even less to do as the worried wife, nurse and mother who stupidly decides to send her son off with someone else when pandemonium looms. Wouldn’t you want your child with you? At least she gets the film’s most ironic line: “It’s not the end of the world,” she tells Ford early on as he is heading out to bail out Dad from a Tokyo jail.

For their parts, Hawkins and Watanabe are totally wasted, even laughable, as the well-intentioned scientists. Poor Hawkins, who’s a great character actress, doesn’t even register. She’s mainly background decoration. Strathairn is the by-the-book military commander.

At least the filmmakers get the monster right. Godzilla’s first mighty threatening roar is the money shot, and the audience I saw the film with appreciated the payoff by hollering and clapping. It was pretty cool, thanks to visual effects guru Jim Rygiel (“The Lord of the Rings” franchise). But, there is nothing beyond the aesthetics. Like too many of these blockbusters, “Godzilla” is all style and little substance. Nevertheless, it’ll be a monster at the box office.

Dana Barbuto may be reached at dbarbuto@ledger.com or follow her on Twitter @dbarbuto_Ledger.